The proliferation of consumer wireless electronics (e.g. smartphones, tablet PCs and laptops) has resulted in consumers increasingly carrying music collections with them. Speaker manufacturers have responded to this market trend by making smaller, more portable wireless speakers and wireless multi-room speakers (e.g., Bluetooth portable speakers and multi-room Wi-Fi speakers). As the form factor of wireless speakers shrinks, the proportion of the enclosure occupied by the speaker element (e.g. the speaker cone and electromagnetic driver) has increased. In a related area, a new generation of smart speakers (e.g. the Amazon Echo from Amazon Inc. of Bellevue Wash. and the Google Home speaker from Google Inc. of Mountain View Calif.) are combining wireless music streaming with local environment sensing (e.g. voice and proximity detection) and automatic speech recognition (ASR). Smart speakers can act as an interface to the World Wide Web as well as an interface to home automation devices (e.g. providing control for smart thermostats and smart televisions). Enhanced sensing of the local environment is an active area of innovation for smart speakers. Examples include, sensing the location of people, identifying speech across a noisy room, or sensing the presence of smart building devices. The speaker element of a traditional speaker can pose several challenges to the goal of sensing the local environment. The speaker element can be large and can occupy much of the available space in the enclosure. In addition, the speaker element can cause electromagnetic interference.
In conclusion, insofar as I am aware, no speaker assembly previously disclosed has provided sound transmission while providing effective sensing of the local environment in the vicinity of the speaker assembly.